My first train trip to Madras is the one I don't remember - Mother told me that when I was a yet a new born and became less mewling though yet suckling, I was dutifully wrapped into a bundle and carried triumphantly like a trophy to meet my grandparents . I was born in Calcutta and had to be transported all the way to deep deep south to Tuticorin to meet them . Naturally, I don't remember the trip although my parents dutifully recorded it in a box camera for posterity. So , there is in the family archives a picture of a skinny infant with kohl-lined eyes and a huge black index fingerprint on the cheek to ward off the evil eye. It is obvious , that like all mothers, my Mother too , thought I was the most beautiful thing to appear on earth and had to be protected from what the Psalmist calls the arrows that fly by day.
The first train trip I do remember ( ostensibly the second ) was from Ranchi to Madras as a five year old . Father announced that he had booked the tickets for our travel to Madras and from thereon to Tuticorin and we would be spending a month and a half in the South. I skipped around the house , ran into the garden to spread the good news to the guava trees and whispered it to the thrumming dragon flies. My Mother, too, was excited ; living so far from her parents , her siblings and sundry cousins she had grown up with, she always longed to see them and hear the intonations of the Tamil dialect of Tirunelveli district. We would complete the first leg of the journey by the Grand Trunk Express by arriving at Madras Central station and then switch to the meter gauge train departing from Madras Egmore station to its final destination Tirunelveli. The particular bogie would be delinked and sent off to Tuticorin at the Maniachhi junction ( if my hazy memory serves me right).
Although there were still a couple of weeks to go, Mother immediately started her packing : packing for the trip was for her a massive military manoeuvre. First, the steel trunks that would be traveling in the break van of the train were identified, then the smaller suitcases that would be stowed under the seats in our compartment were chosen- one for each person. At least two extra trunks were assigned for all the extra things we needed to carry.
I sat next to my Mother as she stacked her everyday cotton sarees , blouses and other accouterments in the first trunk along with my entire summer wardrobe that consisted of frilly frocks in several colours, chemises and bloomers. Her Kancheepuram and Benares silk sarees were placed lovingly into the suitcase and nestling in them was her jewel box with her entire cache of ornaments.Mother thought it necessary to carry them with us, not wanting to leave them behind in the locked house. I never did know whether it was because banks did not have locker facilities then or she did not trust them! Into the same suitcase went a cloth bag with hairpins used to keep her chignon in place and dozens of safety pins and a natty little plastic box with all her cosmetics : her kumkum (ladies used real vermilion powder then and not the stickers of today) , a jar of Vaseline which would form the base on her forehead for the kumkum powder and a small silver box with homemade kohl paste. Father's suitcase was always a mystery to me but the one thing I saw him put in was his revolver. We would be travelling through real rough terrain cutting from the North to South through regions famed for dacoits and looters and he certainly wanted to keep his family safe.The trunk with hand me-downs and the one with gifts for a hundred relatives collected assiduously by my Mother over the months was packed
The last to be packed were the three hold-alls. For the uninitiated ; these extinct piece of luggage were basic bed rolls with two huge compartments at either end. After they were stuffed with odds and ends ( so that they justified their name) they could be rolled into one massive bulging roll and strapped tightly and swung over the shoulder and carried around by sturdy orderlies . Mother first spread in it from end-to-end a thin mattress . She then proceeded to stuff one end ( where the head would rest once it was uncurled ) with the pillows and sheets and the other end with towels,rubber slippers, shoes and several other pairs of footwear wrapped in brown paper bags ( the ubiquitous plastic bags had not appeared yet to ruin our planets) and toilet kits. Giving a final tug at the straps , these were lined up along with the rest of the luggage , which worked out to a dozen or more pieces. Mother generously allowed me to drag my little aluminium box containing my precious earthly possessions and cherished bric a brac: my comics, my little plastic farm animals , the smooth stones and thin sheets of mica that I found glittering in the garden.The trunks were numbered , the suitcases locked and Mother prepared a list to ensure that nothing was missed.
On the day of the journey she added several baskets: into one went bottles of pickles ,a bottle of jam, a tin of Bournvita; another basket contained steel tumblers, an empty flask to buy tea , coffee or milk ; plates , spoons, knives , fruit peelers and other useful implements. Another basket contained the huge steel carrier of cooked food for day one of the journey and several steel boxes of the less perishables for the rest of the journey. The final item was the clay jug ( surayi) for storing water ( which would have to be filled from the stations whenever the train stopped long enough) - if someone had told us then we would one day pay money to buy water he would have been drummed out of town.
My Father proudly added to this assortment his small Hitachi transistor which would be his way of keeping abreast with the news for five days.It was not only the Royalty of India who moved around with his princely possessions, the average Indian , too, moved around with all his household goods. The argument put forth by my Mother when Father glowered at the growing pile lined up against the living room wall was that it was not he but the train that would carry it all!
We travelled first class in a train saloon which consisted of a small room with four berths and had a bathroom attached. As a senior government officer Father was entitled to do so and no one had ever heard of flying.The journey was long and we lived in this little moving house for five days . As we journeyed I watched from the window the rushing and ever changing landscape . We crossed arid lands and lush green fields. Paddy fields, sugarcane fields, orchards and vineyards flew by my window as the train picked up speed . Sometimes it was miles and miles of monotonous flat land. Stations with exotic names went by and I made up a story in my head with each name .I learnt more of the geography of my country than any text book could have ever taught me.The train sped through dense jungles : frightening at night and thick, green and full of shadows in the day . We crossed rivers and chugged past villages where sometime little children ran out of their huts and houses to wave at the train. I waved back with the innocence and glee that only a five year old can possess . I saw small ponds and glittering lakes rushing by , sometimeI saw dried up lakes with cracked earth waiting to be filled again by the unfailing monsoon. I smelt the strong aroma of the molasses as we sped past sugar factories and the acrid smell of the rubber factories. During the day I saw massive anthills in which must have lived huge snakes and at night I saw twinkling village lights afar : sometimes a single light on top of a hill would indicate a lonely and a not-so-often-visited temple . I would sometimes get coal dust, spewed from the engine, into my eye and Mother would rinse my eye with water and chastise me for being careless. Father told me horrible tales of hands being cut off and warned me not to stick them out.My joy and excitement temporarily dampened I would withdraw and curl up on the upper berth with my comics for a while.
On the fourth day we chugged into Madras Central station .Ah , the sound of Tamil : the porters shouted as they jumped into the train even as it slowed to enter the designated platform. They wore red shirts and red shorts which were covered with grime and had a brass amulet claiming their status as authorised porters of the Central station. A faded blue cloth adorned each of their head like a quasi turban. This cloth, I later saw, was rolled into a cushion when they heaved the heavy boxes on top of their head . Saar, which is our luggage asked one as if he has known us for decades. Another quickly laid claim to us and they verbally slugged it out . They got abusive by the minute and I hid myself behind my mother wide eyed and scared of these red demons ready to kill each other. I listened to the coarse words I had never heard my parents use and never quite got the meaning of till much later when I became an adult. I was shocked to see them liberally use second person singular ( nee) while addressing my Father and expected my Father to thrash the rude and abusive fellows. I was initiated to Madras Tamil that day and to my tender ears that had only heard the softness of the Tamil as spoken by my parents, the rude words were frightening in their vehemence. One of the porters yelled to his friends for help and together they fought off all the other rivals and grabbed our baggage.When my Father asked how much they wanted he was promptly told he could give whatever pleased him. After all , they assured him he was returning to his homeland.Father was touched by the Tamil camaraderie and beamed. The porters respectfully requested my Mother to alight with me ; giving me a tobacco stained smile which only drove me closer to my mother . While we stood on the dirty platform next to a trolley loaded with something that oozed liquid stench ( probably fish ) another porter joined the two and they passed the luggage hand to hand and dumped it on the platform with Mother exhorting them to be careful. Father stood in the compartment to ensure that all was unloaded.Everything was quite orderly till all was unloaded and then suddenly it was mayhem!
The three porters ( while Father kept yelling he needed only two ) distributed the luggage all over their body. I watched with awe as they became the balancing acrobats in a circus with the trunks on their heads , the suitcases on top of the trunks. They held this towering pile with both their hands which seemed to have stretched to dangerous limits . Another foisted the holdall over their shoulders and hung their arms with the baskets. They looked like some fantasy trees that had grown luggage on their limbs.
Mother went crazy trying to keep track of the luggage as they suddenly broke into a trot that soon became a high speed canter .The porters it seemed to me, just wanted to grab our luggage and run away. I had never in my five years of earthly life seen such boldness and lack of concern for passengers. Our luggage was running ahead of us and my Mother dragged me in top sprint yelling at the porters all the while to slow down . They did not heed and my Mother dodged passengers and other obstacles on the platform and with me in tow picking up speed , and all the while keeping an eye on the bobbing suitcases . Father dashed behind the other rapacious fellows shouting a warning to my Mother to not lose them. Mother thrust the transistor into my hands and shouted to hold on to it.It was sheer pandemonium and I was convinced I would get lost or get trodden over by other passengers rushing around in a similar fashion each after their luggage. I held the Hitachi against my chest with one hand and held on to my Mother tightly with the other. We finally emerged from the station gates and the running porters eventually, to my panting Mother's relief , stopped and dumped our luggage on the ground . One shouted that he would fetch a taxi to take us to Egmore station from where we would have to continue the journey further South.Another lectured to my Mother that they were licensed porters and would not steal our luggage unlike the unlicensed rascals who prowled around . It did not reassure my Mother , after all she had not noted their numbers nor had she really paid enough attention to their faces. She thanked all her Gods that we had not lost anything ( a mocking minion from the pantheon decided to change the situation within minutes) . Father arrived with the other porter and Mother promptly started counting the pieces of luggage . I was exhausted by the sudden change of tempo and plonked myself atop a trunk and placed the transistor next to me . I gawked at the crowd that seemed to be moving in all directions at the same time . So many human beings rushing like ants in and out of anthills. There were elderly women with the pleats of their silk sarees tucked higher to provide agility,little girls with tightly braided plaits and silk long skirts; for the first time I saw young girls in skirts and half of a saree wrapped around them . The smell of jasmine flowers and coconut oil floated around them . The men had pencil thin moustaches and wore either veshtis or drainpipe pants and everyone was chattering so fast in various accents.
Mother finished counting and asked me to hand her the transistor and when I turned to pick it up : it was gone ! Bedlam all over again : Mother yelled at me for putting it down , Father yelled at Mother for putting it in my hands and not taking care of it herself. I howled with self pity and as a release from the traumatic experience of the day.
We were once again besieged by porters who wanted to know what had happened . At this point my Father lost all his love for his beloved Madras and went into a tirade about how we come from the north to our beloved land and the first thing we find are thieves and rascals. This stirred the Tamil chauvinism of the crowd consisting of porters , taxi drivers and vendors and several took off in different directions stating they would find the thief and thrash him and bring us back the lost transistor. The drama had now expanded to include the other passengers as well : some tutted and agreed with Father , some glowered at my Mother for her incompetence and some took off about independent India and is this what we became free from the British for. A policeman in knife sharp starched shorts appeared and the crowd jostled with each other to tell him the story. The moment my Father announced he was from the military, things changed . Some in the crowd now spoke of the shame that a returning hero who was serving his country so far from his hometown was treated thus, some pointed to me and said I would develop an inherent hatred for all Tamils and turn into a Northerner . It went on, with each having his say till a couple of porters dragged a sorry looking tramp by his frayed collar with the Hitachi in their hands. Mother quickly wiped her eyes ( tears that had appeared not so much by my Father scolding her as for losing the transistor) and I breathed again. The pleased crowd doled out more advice - some wanted to thrash the thief as a lesson to other prospectives lingering around stations , the policeman wanted to know if Father wanted to give a complaint also reminding him helpfully that it would mean he would have to postpone his journey and go to the police station with him . He sounded concerned about our vacation but Father caught on that he really wanted to avoid all the paperwork .Refusing to pursue the matter further Father thanked the nabbers. The policeman said that he was the one who had sent them to find the thief ( while he stood next to us!) Father should give him something ( the universal euphemism for a bribe ) as well as reward the nabbers .My Father pulled out his wallet and by that seemingly innocuous gesture the floodgates of greed opened.The three porters demanded their share for chasing and apprehending the thief . Another appeared with a bleeding toe and stated that he, too , had run to catch the thief and had stumbled and fallen . Had he not been injured in this brave attempt he would have been the one to nab the rascal ; he now needed money for medicine. Another chipped in that although he had not chased the thief, he had dutifully stood guard over the other things. He was also the one who had named the possible suspect which had made it easier for the others to grab the rascal. The list of those to be rewarded grew by the minute and soon my Father was pulling out all the money his wallet and handing it around. Seeing my Father helpless in the onslaught and money being splurged, Mother who had been silent till that moment, lost her temper and turned into a veritable Kali. Hell certainly has no fury as an Indian housewife who suspects she is being swindled ! The porters pushing each other to grab the money took to their heels and the cop cowered . My Father looked at my Mother with new respect and I felt safe in the world again with my heroic Mother by my side.
So we gathered our numerous trunks and holdalls and baskets and Father tucked the Hitachi under his arm and quick marched the entourage to the waiting taxi to get to Madras Egmore station.I stole a quick look at the stately red structure and the spire with the clock from the speeding taxi window and knew I would never forget my first introduction to this Madras icon .
